Dreams, Missing Rats, and a Perfect Boyfriend
by MelaineScarlett
Summary: A one-shot, Missing Moment of sorts in which Hermione first starts seeing Ron as more than just a friend. Rated T just in case for minor language. Please read and review!


A/N So I'm not sure how I feel about the end result of this story so please review it and let me know what you think- thank you!

Also as always JKR is the brilliant creator and owner of all characters, places, plots, and events mentioned. This is merely amateur writing by a devoted fan.

"_Hermione! Hermione, wake up!"_

_Hermione jump up in her bed, abruptly awoken by the urgent and slightly annoyed voice of Ginny Weasley. Groaning tiredly Hermione finally replied, "Alright, alright. I'm awake. What in the name of Merlin is wrong Ginny?" _

_Hermione quickly threw her arm across her eyes to block the light as Ginny abruptly flung open the bed curtains of Hermione's dormitory bed. _

"_You do remember what today is, don't you?" Ginny asked with an audible smile._

_That question successfully perked up Hermione. "What? No, what's today?" Her rising panic reflected in her tone. _

_Hermione sat up in her bed, mentally going over her exam schedule. She had an Ancient Ruins translation due on Tuesday and then a Potion practical exam next Friday. But what was today? _

_Quickly moving beyond panic Hermione began to beg, "Ginny, what's today! I can't remember!" Suddenly she began to shoot out of bed. "Maybe it's written in my diary!" _

_Ginny stopped Hermione's desperate attempts, "Hermione you honestly don't remember?" Starring at Hermione with a face of absolute incredulity, Ginny suddenly burst out laughing. "Oh this is too much! You've finally driven yourself metal from too much studying! Honestly Hermione, who forgets their seventeenth birthday?" Ginny finished with an uncontrollable shout of laughter. _

"_Today's my birthday? I'm seventeen today? How did I forget that?" joining Ginny in laughing and trying to contain her excitement at the same time. _

"_Only you, Hermione!" Ginny laughed while shaking her head. "Now hurry up and come down to the common room- we're all waiting down there!" _

_As Ginny ran out of the dormitory, Hermione jumped up in excitement and ran to get dressed. _

_Ten minutes later she was making her way down to the common room wearing a new light pink dress and her curly hair tied of to the side with a pink ribbon. As she entered the common room she immediately spotted Ginny and Harry curled up on a couch together by the fireplace and ran over to join them._

"_Happy Birthday, Hermione!" Harry cheered as he stood up to give her a hug. _

"_Where your boyfriend ran off to I have no clue," Ginny explain to Hermione with a shake of her head."He would be late for his girlfriend's birthday party."_

"_Don't worry, he's on his way," Harry assured with a mischievous and knowing smile._

"_Ginny you really have to stop being so hard on him," Hermione admonished Ginny. "As hard as it may be for you to believe, he's actually the perfect boyfriend!" Hermione explained quite wistfully._

"_If you say so." Ginny accepted with a sigh. "But while we're waiting for your 'perfect man', open up my gift!" _

_Hermione excitedly reached for the present Ginny handed over. After enthusiastically opening the wrapping she unveiled a light blue, button- up jumper with sea green accents around both the wrists and the neck. _

"_It's the jumper you tried on that day in Hogsmeade. Remember, the one you said you couldn't afford to buy because you were saving up for that monstrosity of a book, 'Walking with Wizard Wisdom.'"_

"_It was 'Minding Magical Minds'" Hermione corrected with an amused smile, "But thank you Ginny, I was really disappointed that I couldn't get this jumper! I can't believe you went all the way back and bought it for me! Thank you!"_

"_What are friends for?" Ginny replied in mock nonchalance but with a quite satisfied smile all the same. "Harry's turn now!" _

_Hermione turned and accepted the wrapped gift Harry handed her. Opening it, she discovered it was a large, ornately covered book. Hermione turned the book over searching the cover for a title or any text on it for that matter. _

"_It's probably the only book I could ever get you that I was sure you don't already have," Harry teased as Hermione open the maroon and gold coloured book to find it was a photo album. _

"_Oh Harry! It's wonderful!" Hermione exclaimed as she paged through the large book viewing several moving pictures of her and her friends throughout their various years at Hogwarts. _

_Just then the portrait entryway open and Ron Weasley walked in._

"_Sorry I'm late darling," he genuinely apologized as he walked over and gave Hermione a quick kiss on the lips. "But I was finishing up your birthday cake in the kitchens and it took longer than expected. Working with iced frosting is not as easy as you'd think!" he explained with a wide-eyed smile as he placed the cake with seventeen lit candles on it on a sidetable. _

"_That's alright! This cake is amazing! Thank you so much Ron!" Hermione smiled and leaned over to give Ron another kiss. "Everything is perfect-you are perfect!" she added, giving Ron a big smile. _

"_Thank you Hermione, you're perfect too!" He lovingly replied as he kissed the tip of her nose. "Now, make a wish and blow out your candles before this bloody frosting melts!" Ron said with a laugh. _

_Hermione had no idea what she could possible wish for- she had great friends, a perfect boyfriend- what more could she ask for? _

_But all the same she closed her eyes, made a wish, and blew out all seventeen candles in one breathe. _

"_You should have jinxed the candles to be inextinguishable!" Harry joked to Ron. _

"_Oh ha ha, Harry. Very funny." Hermione said sarcastically with a raised eyebrow. _

"_Don't worry sweetheart, I would never do that to you." Ron said, scoffing off Harry suggestion with a smile and kissed Hermione's cheek. _

"_Alright, alright. Enough of that! Give her your gift already, Ron!" Ginny rolled her eyes at her brother, but smiled all the same. _

_Ron looked somewhat nervous, his face becoming quite red and his hands fidgeting at his sides. "Right, well…erm, here goes." _

_Ron moved to stand in front of Hermione, but instead of sitting down on the couch next to her, he knelt down onto one knee. _

_Ginny could not contain her surprised gasp followed by a squeal of excitement. Harry simply shushed her and pulled her to the other side of the common room with a knowing smirk etched across his face. _

_Hermione, however, was only vaguely aware of their responses. All Hermione was sure of was her heart pounding in her chest much faster than its normal rate, her stomach rolling and heaving with excitement as well as anxiousness, and her face, which was almost in pain she was smiling so widely. _

"_Ron…" Hermione started in an awed voice._

"_Just a second Hermione," Ron interrupted her with a smile. "Now, I know we're both still really young and both in school still, but somehow I just know that this is right." Ron paused, taking Hermione's broad grin and slightly misty eyes as positive response and continued with a relieved smiled. "So Hermione, I have something to ask you." _

_Beyond words by now, Hermione simply nodded for Ron to continue with his question. Ron took Hermione's hands giving them a quick kiss and then looked back into her eyes._

"_Hermione, love," Ron smiled up at Hermione, who could hardly believe she had such a perfect boyfriend,_

"_Will you please tell me what your cat did with Scabbers?" _

_Hermione's smile immediately faded, her face crinkling in confusion. Ron still knelt before her on his knee, smiling up at her as if she were the Juliet to his Romeo however his tone sounded quite annoyed. _

"_What did you say?" Hermione asked, sure that she must have missed heard him. _

_Ron's smile becoming even bigger if possible, he repeated, "I said, Hermione will you tell me what your bloody cat did with Scabbers?" _

_Shaking her head in confusion, Hermione just stared bewildered back at Ron's adoring face. __Suddenly she felt someone shoving her shoulder quite forcefully- _

"_HERMIONE!" _

Thirteen year old Hermione Granger finally jumped up awake, her head lifting from where it had been previously resting on her Transfiguration text book.

"'Bout time you finally heard me!" Hermione heard an exasperated voice complain.

As she turned towards the voice, she was quickly stopped by a painful stiffening in her neck. "oh, ouch!" she exclaimed as she reached up to rub the kink out of her neck.

"That's what you get for using your beloved books as a pillow. You know, Hogwarts has these amazing things called beds- that's where normal people tend to sleep." Sarcastically explained the speaker, whom she no longer needed to look at to identify.

Hermione shook her head to clear it, the remnants of sleep still clouding her consciousness. "What do you need, Ronald?" she finally responded in a frustrated voice.

"For the hundredth time, what did your stupid cat do with Scabbers?" Ron demanded.

"How should I know?" Hermione snapped back. "Maybe you should take a little more care of your pet! Stop blaming everything on me! First Scabbers and then the Firebolt, and now Scabbers again!"

Still quite disoriented from sleep, she continued in her rant. "Ugh! You are in no way the perfect guy! And any girl would be crazy to go out with you because all you would do is be a selfish, whiny boyfriend! Not perfect in any single aspect!" Hermione screamed at Ron, having finally reached her limit.

Ron, looking shocked and very confused by Hermione's angry (and quite honestly random) outburst, just stared at her, "You're bloody mental!"

"Oy! What's going on? I thought you guys had finally gotten over all this bickering!" Harry questioned as he came to stand in between his two best friends.

"It's not my fault, mate! I just came over here to see what her cat's done with Scabbers this time and she goes barmy on me- starts going on about me not being a perfect boyfriend or something like that!"

"What?" Harry exclaimed incredulously and looked over to Hermione to clear up the story since Ron was obviously mixing it up.

Hermione felt her face becoming quite heated as she became more aware of what she had just said to Ron. But Hermione simply groaned in frustration as her face continuing to flush, "Never mind! Ugh! You two are enough to mkae anyone mental! Just let me get back to studying! Unlike some people, I care about my grades and actually put effort into my homework! And no, you cannot see what I wrote for McGonagall's essay- so don't bother asking!" she ended with a daggering look at Ron.

As Hermione finished, Harry and Ron just stood there staring at her as if she was a Fluffy- Aragog hybrid.

"Like I said, completely mental!" Ron said to Harry as they both turned to the stairs that led to the boys' dormitory. "It must be a female thing." He added with a shake of his head.

Hermione sat back into her recently vacated chair and tried to collect herself. She was teeming with anger from her fight with Ron, but for the most part she was still shaken by the dream she just had.

Thinking back to the dream birthday scene, she attempted to remember as much as she could.

It had been her seventeenth birthday, and Ron Weasley had been her boyfriend- a perfect one at that.

But what did it mean if she was dreaming about her best friend in that way?

And what had been going on between Harry and Ginny in the dream, Hermione thought as she suddenly remember them being quite cozy with one another.

Although she was significantly discomforted by her dream, the more she thought back on the endearing moments between the dream version of herself and the dream version of Ron, longing suddenly replaced confusion. He had just been so nice and wonderfully romantic in her dream. Hermione couldn't help but wonder despite what she had yelled at Ron just a few minutes ago, if he would be like that one day with a girl.

Well if that did ever happened, she would never be the girl, Hermione concluded shaking the fantasy out of her head. Look at how much they fought with one another- no, he would never like her that way.

And she of course would never like Ron in that way, Hermione quickly reminded herself. It was Ron- the infuriating boy who blamed her for everything, yet still expected Hermione to allow him to copy her homework; the bumbling, lumbering friend who constantly called her a know-it-all and made fun of her of liking school. No, Hermione concluded, she would never like Ronald Weasley in that way.

It was probably Trelawney's preposterous excuse for a class that made her have this strange dream, she assured herself. Yes, Hermione was obviously just having a reaction to the ridiculous amounts of incense Trelawney always burned.

However, despite all her logical arguments and excuses, for the rest of the day Hermione couldn't quite get rid of the pleasing warmth that swirled in her stomach at the thought of her and Ron Weasley being more than just friends.

A/N so just in case there is some confusion, the dream (aka the italics) is suppose to be completely over-the-top, exaggerated fluff created by Hermione's thirteen year old subconscious. In other words, no I do not think Ron would ever act this nauseatingly romantic in a relationship- he's just not that kind of guy :)


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